this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2026
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    DISCLAIMER: Arch Linux is not a beginner friendly distribution, and this is not a recommendation or good practice.

    I know how to use pacman -S. I have yet to experience a Discover related issue after months of use.

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    [–] Petter1@discuss.tchncs.de 60 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

    It should be β€œyay [wanted program]” instead of β€œKDE discovery” in my opinion

    [–] marcos@lemmy.world 9 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    Does yay integrate with flatpack and snap?

    [–] tempest@lemmy.ca 47 points 3 weeks ago

    Why the hell would I want snap?

    [–] flameleaf@lemmy.world 8 points 3 weeks ago

    AUR pkgbuild files are basically just bash scripts. You can integrate them with anything.

    [–] moopet@sh.itjust.works 3 points 2 weeks ago

    No, but then flatpak and snap fail most of the time anyway.

    [–] Speiser0@feddit.org 32 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

    Installing something on arch is easy imo. The CLI is simple and well enough documented, and the package build system is easy to use. For comparison with ubuntu: pacman -S name is not harder than apt install name. And try to install something on ubuntu if it's not in the official package repos.

    [–] OwOarchist@pawb.social 6 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    ubuntu: pacman -S name is not harder than apt install name.

    Eh, it's a teensy bit harder, since you have to remember what -S means, rather than the easy to remember and plain English 'install'. But, yeah, not much of a difference.

    And try to install something on ubuntu if it’s not in the official package repos.

    1: Go to that something's website.

    2: look for their download/install instructions page, scroll to Linux instructions if necessary.

    3: Install instructions for Debian/Ubuntu are usually the first one listed, and typically just consist of a few commands you can copy and paste over without modifying.

    It isn't particularly difficult in most cases.

    [–] Nalivai@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

    4: those commands were written for previous version of Ubuntu and now dependency tree doesn't compute, also one of the commands is to add their custom repo, and you don't have keys for it so it doesn't work anyway. You try to remove the bad repo and now your apt is all fucked. You regenerate your repo list, googled the package and your version name, random stackexchage page gave you their live repo, but it needs a newer version of a library that incompatible with 54 of something that you already have. You learn about snap, installed 43Gb of something, it exists but still doesn't really work because package maintaiers didn't actually move it to snap, it was someone else. By this point you copy-pasted so many commands into your terminal you afraid it gained sentience. You call your more computer literate friend, he starts saying something about incompatible dependancies, containers, and you don't really understand much. By the end, you decide that you didn't actually want the software.
    Later you discover that your sound doesn't work anymore, and there is an error when you reboot.

    Good ending: you installed Arch, installed yay and instead of remembering unmemorable -S you just do yay package_name and you're very happy with your choices.

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    [–] humanamerican@lemmy.zip 31 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    Did pacman get packagekit support or are we just talking about flatpaks here?

    [–] Saapas@piefed.zip 46 points 3 weeks ago (3 children)

    Arch Wiki has still this warning

    Warning

    As explained in a GitHub comment by a Package Maintainer, "Handling system packages via packagekit is just fundamentally incompatible with our high-maintenance rolling release distro, where any update might leave the system in an unbootable or otherwise unusable state if the user does not take care reading pacman's logs or merging pacnew files before rebooting."

    [–] humanamerican@lemmy.zip 13 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

    So its less about lack of packagekit support in pacman and more about lack of manual intervention features in GUI software managers?

    [–] protogen420@lemmy.blahaj.zone 11 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

    it is more about arch's philosy being your system may not boot next update, happens pretty much no where else, except windows, manjaro and sometimes ubuntu

    [–] humanamerican@lemmy.zip 7 points 3 weeks ago

    My last Fedora version upgrade was a test of my troubleshooting skills, for sure.

    [–] OwOarchist@pawb.social 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

    it is more about arch’s philosy being your system may not boot next update

    Yeah ... no thanks. I'll be okay with slightly outdated versions of various packages, as long as they still work.

    [–] tempest@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 weeks ago

    I mean I've been running an arch derivative for nearly ten years and the last time I got got was an Nvidia driver bug in 2020.

    As much as arch talks about it it doesn't happen that often.

    [–] caseyweederman@lemmy.ca 3 points 2 weeks ago

    I'm not sure it's ever happened to me. I imagine it must have, because of Arch's reputation, but I can't recall it ever actually happening to me personally.

    [–] user224@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

    Wait, I am supposed to care about .pacnew files?

    Anyway, so far all I found there is new optional dependencies.
    I rather wonder what happens when manual intervention is needed, like when JDK started being in conflict with JRE.

    [–] Telodzrum@lemmy.world 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

    Not right away, but they will eventually cause issues if you let them sit as pacnew. I use meld to resolve the conflicts and merge the two.

    [–] BurgerBaron@piefed.social 2 points 2 weeks ago

    meld makes the task less annoying +1

    [–] Anafabula@discuss.tchncs.de 17 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

    It has been working for a while, but it's not recommended

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    [–] dustbin@thelemmy.club 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

    Did pacman get packagekit support

    It appears using pacman on Arch is the recommended method for the repos, per this issue adding warnings: https://invent.kde.org/plasma/discover/-/merge_requests/829

    or are we just talking about flatpaks here

    https://apps.kde.org/discover/ ->

    "With Discover, you can manage software from multiple sources, including your operating system's software repository, Flatpak repos, the Snap store, or even AppImages from store.kde.org."

    [–] humanamerican@lemmy.zip 5 points 3 weeks ago

    So, were talking about flatpaks.

    [–] bequirtle@lemmy.world 17 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

    IME, KDE Discover and similar app stores are so unreliable, telling beginners to use them is akin to harmful misinformation

    If you need a GUI software manager, my suggestion is to not use arch

    [–] SpongyAneurysm@feddit.org 6 points 3 weeks ago

    Hard agree. I always struggled when using Discover, as a Beginner. Don't know if I could make it work now as a more experienced user, Because I don't use it and don't have a need to. Learning how to use 'pacman -S $pkg_name' was super simple and is very fast. Sure I don't have a nice GUI, that lets me browse what apps are there to be installed, but I have a webbrowser for that.

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    [–] Brokkr@lemmy.world 16 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

    I'm not an expert, but I thought on Arch you are specifically not supposed to use the discover store because it can cause partial updates which can in turn cause major problems.

    However, the point still stands, pacman and the AUR are easy and have nearly everything.

    [–] anyhow2503@lemmy.world 17 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

    The AUR is a great resource but it's also being sold as a package repository users don't need to actively think about or understand. I honestly think malware is going to be much more common on the AUR if we aren't careful.

    [–] copygirl@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

    I keep hearing this claim online but the Arch bible (which you really should be familiar with if you use Arch) and pretty much everyone that knows anything will tell you that the AUR is useful, but not something to blindly use. I recommend everyone check the PKGBUILD, verify the source URLs are correct, and check the diffs when updating. It's not that much effort.

    And since it comes from a single (user) package repository, you'll probably have hundreds of people doing the same, or even going a step or two further and looking into the code, reporting the package if anything bad is going on. Still miles better than downloading .exe files you find from a Google search, even if you were lazy and didn't do the aforementioned checks. (But if you don't do that, you should probably just use Flatpaks or similar.)

    [–] anyhow2503@lemmy.world 5 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    All official resources, Arch maintainers and high quality guides have been putting a ton of effort into teaching people how to use the AUR safely. That hasn't stopped some people, even back before Arch got really popular, but you can't reach everyone. Alternative package managers and pacman wrappers made the AUR a lot more accessible, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but there are good reasons for all the caution. Combine that with Arch increasing in popularity and getting picked up by all the shitty influencers and you get a lot of people ,who don't know what they're doing, installing everything from the AUR with their CLI/GUI of choice. Then you've got Arch derivatives making AUR packages easily accessible from the start, bad advice on places like reddit etc.

    Long story short: it seems that over the years whenever I check in, users that barely know how it works are happily installing random shit from random people on the AUR because they saw it in a YT video or something.

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    [–] MousePotatoDoesStuff@lemmy.world 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

    Eh. I haven't had issues for a few months and I back up my files on a weekly basis and -Syu once or twice a month. Worst case scenario, I'll just reinstall and restore from backup.

    Also, I mainly use Discover for high level stuff like browsers and IDEs.

    [–] Monstrosity@lemmy.today 13 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

    As a Debian slut this level of sweating over updates is wild to me.

    [–] TheOneCurly@feddit.online 8 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

    Yeah but imagine reading about a new release of something and it appearing in your updates the same day. Shiny new software every day is addicting.

    [–] sudoMakeUser@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 weeks ago

    On the flip side, reading about an exploited vulnerability in a package and then realizing your machine isn't affected because Debian has an outdated package in it's repo

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    [–] ekZepp@lemmy.world 14 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

    Yay -S "Am I a joke for you?"

    [–] ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zip 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

    I've just been using yay, what does the -S do am I missing something important?

    [–] ekZepp@lemmy.world 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

    -S, --sync

    Synchronize packages. Packages are installed directly from the remote repositories, including all dependencies required to run the packages.

    [–] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 3 weeks ago

    Technically correct answer but not super helpful imo. yay <package name> starts a search from which you enter your selection(s) from matches. yay -S <package name> installs the package directly, errors if it's not found

    [–] rtxn@lemmy.world 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

    The original image gives me strong "Shepard, Tali, and Garrus doing shenanigans" vibes.

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    [–] blinfabian@feddit.nl 8 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
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    [–] dismay3915@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago

    Pacman -Syu java

    Windows users : 😨😨😰

    [–] mrcleanup@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago

    Pamac is great too, and it can run all your updates at shutdown.

    [–] Fokeu@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

    sudo pacman -S (name), far easier than any gui in my opinion.

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